Jia Chang : In Praise of a Relational Aesthetics
Jia Chang : In Praise of Relational Aesthetics
Only a short time ago, a Westerner travelling in Asia
could not help but be surprised by the prevailing discretion in male-female relationships:
no holding hands, no hugging, no emotional outpourings, no kissing, and no
furtive glances in public. There has been a kind of ban on direct emotional expression
that governed the social behavior. However, the advent of globalization, the acceleration
of interaction between different people and culture, and the communication
development via internet like social networks have overcome the taboos in the
culture. As entering the 21st century, the world of appearance has
changed, and art arena has expanded. However, artists still predict and look
further into the future before anyone else. In an essay titled Esthetique Relationnelle (Relational
Aesthetics) written by a young art critic Nicolas Bourriaud in 1998, he tried
to highlight what is an obsession with interactivity which crosses our time. In
the introduction of his essay, Bourriaud described the human interaction and
social relationship based on resistance regarding the proximity and social
formatting as if predicting.
In the end of the 1990s, Jia Chang’s art world revealed in a time of transition
to the world is parallel to such circumstances and consideration. Her work,
which brings up the two issues about identity (identite) and otherness (alterite),
examines the positioning of an artist, especially a female artist, and
symbolizes interests which shake the era while utilizing a variety of media
such as performance art, video, and photography. Something, which has impudence
and critical distance at the same time, operates within Jia Chang’s unique
processes and methods, and she protects it from the other side of the violent
situation she created. The video work titled Physical Condition for being an
Artist created in 2000 contains violence in which Jang gets slapped and
eggs thrown on her face while exposing her half body. At the end of the scene,
she is shown with a broad smile, illustrating her unyielding spirit
significantly. Here, it seems that Jang attempts to represent the victory of a group
against the unflinching behavior of the other. Her derogatory grin after the
ordeal is its obvious evidence.
Clearly focused on challenging the other by
demolishing its perceptual practices, even provoking the other from its
unstable aesthetic inertia, Jia Chang imagines all forms of comedietta
(Saynete) that praise indecent actions and words. In another work Standing
up Peeing (2006), which shows the standing naked women urinating in the
stands, the two different forms of photography and videos are in the same
context. Through this, Jang raises a question about the boundary which
distinguishes two genders. In another series of her work titled Pee-Tree(2007) and Fixed Object (2007), she even expresses the poetic territory
under the subject matter of urine. In the P-Tree is a sculpture with gigantic
tree branches made of metal. The beads are hung in the branches and urine is filled
in the beads. Its shadow transforms an exhibition space into a dream-like space
through the projection of light. In the series of work titled Fixed Object (2007),
the artist fixates salt with urine-based stabilizer onto objects such as a
mirror or leather straps.
In reviewing her entire work, Jia Chang has faithfully performed her role as an
alchemist in each artwork. She had left her mark as one of the women artists in
the Magiciens de la Terre exhibition in 1989 curated by Jean-Hubert Martin who
gains an insight into the new artistic era. Jia Chang’s artwork, which leaves a
strong impression behind the audience, is materialization of her reaction
against the pitfalls of our world with all its fallacies and violence. More
specifically, according to the central figure of the Fluxus movement, Robert
Filliou, all acts in life should be integrated with artistic duty, and
therefore art is based on a collective power that seeks to bring about changes
in life.
Therefore, Jia Chang’s work deals with fundamental and essential problems and the
body can be one of the most important mediums. If there is a strong desire to discover
the significant touch of feminist in her work, Jia Chang is no more or less a
feminist than a male artist is a de facto male chauvinist. The overarching
predicament hinges on language and culture, and principles. It is a problem of
conventions. All forms of barriers, and whatever they may be, the motivation
behind her work is to implode the barriers between art and life?by whatever
means necessary.
Philippe Piguet (Art Critic, Curator)
